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Cute but dim quolls have been taught to stop eating toxic toads

Quolls have some studying to do if they are to survive

Jonathan Webb

By Joshua Rapp Learn

CONSERVATIONISTS have trained endangered quolls to avoid the toxic toads that kill them.

Northern quolls are marsupials from northern Australia. In the 2000s, poisonous cane toads hopped into their territory. The quolls, knowing no better, ate them and died in swathes. They were wiped out in much of their range and are now endangered.

To save the species, some were moved to the toad-free English Company Islands off Australia’s north coast. There, Jonathan Webb at the University of Technology Sydney and his colleagues …